You Bought a WHAT?

If you know me you know I like to do my own work.  I also feel that nowadays our culture favors quantity/profit over quality.  I had been eyeing a tire changer and balancer for some time ever since I found that reasonably good quality can be had for an affordable price.  Given the looming threat of tariffs I decided to pull the trigger on a setup.  If you research these units you might come to the conclusion (like I did) that most of these units are very similar, possibly coming from the same source.  Whether true or not I watched a ton of videos and read many reviews before making my decision.  A big factor in my case was making sure that I could get the unit delivered into my garage as I don't have the equipment necessary to haul the unit from the street to my driveway.  The seller I used offered an add-on delivery package to address this need.

I bought a combo consisting of a tire changer and a dynamic balancer.  The seller had a store in both Amazon and eBay; I got a slightly better deal from the eBay store.

The unit was shipped quickly and I was contacted to coordinate delivery within 10 days.  The person who delivered my unit used an electric pallet jack to effortlessly move the two crates up my driveway and right into my garage.  As a bonus he knew a bit about Nissan cars and we had a short enjoyable chat.

With the help of my lovely assistant (and a shop crane) I was able to separate the units from their stacked shipping configuration.

The tire balancer was pretty much assembled; all I had to do was attach the balancing shaft extension.

The changer required just a bit of assembly but the instructions and online videos made assembly pretty straightforward.

Given the space I have available in my garage I chose to mount the changer on heavy-duty castors with good brakes.  This allows me to wheel the unit into a nook when not in use but move it into the open bay when I needed to use it.  The unit is heavy enough that maneuvering the changer requires a bit of muscle even on wheels.

Within no time I had the unit ready for a test run and it did not disappoint.  I had watched a few videos on the process so nothing was unexpected.

After moving some things around I found a spot for the two units to live.  Following many of the recommendations I mounted the balancer to the floor for better results.  

Now to decide which vehicle needs new tires first!

My floor is a peeling

When I built the detached garage about four years ago I knew I wanted something over the concrete floor.  After researching a few options I decided I would go with an epoxy covering from Epoxy Coat.  As I normally do with any project, I over-researched to ensure that I would apply the coating correctly.  In this case I used the acid etching process first.  Not being satisfied with the results I then rented a diamond floor grinder from Home Depot. 

After applying the epoxy coating in one afternoon and the clear-coat the following day, I had a beautiful covering over my garage floor.

After three years of this floor holding up very well to my abuse, I noticed that I had a section of floor that began to crack and peel.  I figured it must be an area that I had not properly treated and planned on purchasing a patch kit for the area.  I didn't apply any patch right away and the following year I noticed another section starting to peel...  and then a third.  

After pondering why this would be I realized that every time a new section appeared was after a drastic temperature swing in the winter.  Such temperature swings are not common but also not unheard of here in middle Tennessee, swings such as 30 degrees in the morning to 60 degrees in the afternoon.  Since my garage is unheated I thought these drastic temperature swings were likely causing these crack and peel sections.

If epoxy wasn't going to work for me in these conditions I felt confident that my second flooring choice would do: a floating floor from SnapLock industries (specifically GarageTrac and GarageDeck). While not much preparation is actually required to lay a floating floor I did use a floor scraper to remove as much loose epoxy coating as possible.

Laying the new floor was really easy.  Any difficulty I had was simply cutting around the posts for the lift.  While you can use a carpenter's knife for cutting the tiles I found that a Dremel with a large cutting wheel was much faster.  I heard someone describe the process of laying the tiles as "playing with adult Legos" and that's exactly what it felt like.

It took me a few days to lay the floor only because I don't have a lot of contiguous time to tackle the project in one day; the overall project took about 3 hours total.  The end result is a good looking floor that I feel confident can stand-up to the temperature changes as well as handle the occasional dropped tool much better than the epoxy coating.

 

Dueling Door Openers

This weekend I finally had a chance to install a second garage door opener that Amy bought me for my birthday a few months ago!  

Garage Babes

Here are some pics of my girls helping out in the garage...

I'm no longer fuming

Now that it's getting cold outside, it's time to break out the garage heaters.  One conundrum faced when wrenching in cold weather is the need to run a car while working on it while keeping the exhaust fumes minimal.  This issue becomes even more prevalent when a classic car is involved as they don't have modern emission equipment installed.  I came up with a cheap solution to my problem: a DIY exhaust evacuation system.  The parts list is simple: 25 feet of 4" flexible foil ducting and a 4" duct fan, all obtained from Amazon.com.

I secured one end of the duct to the ridge vent in the garage.  I then ran it down the rafters towards the left rear post on the lift.

I then ran the duct down the lift post and secured it with an adhesive zip-tie mount and zip ties.

After adding the fan and a short section of duct to the upstream side of the fan, it was ready for testing.  I used a jack stand to hold the fan in place while I slid the short section of duct onto the tailpipe.  I plugged-in the fan and started up the car.  After letting the car warm up (to confirm that my heater control valve was leaking), I can say that there was only the faintest of exhaust smells in the garage; without the duct the smell would have been so bad I would have had to leave the garage.  Success!

Bolt bath

I had been cleaning all the bolts I've been pulling off the 280z with a wire wheel and wire brushes.  The problem with this approach is that it can be destructive to the corrosion plating.  I happened upon an easier way to clean the grime off these bolts and hardware: a simple soak in concentrated Simple Green.

Grimy bolts need to be cleaned.

Soak the dirty bolts in Simple Green for an hour or more.  I use an old toothbrush after 30 minutes to loosen up the grime. 

After a rinse in water and a towel dry, the bolt is clean and dirt free!